The FDA Might Ban Fluoride Supplements. Dentists Are Upset

Dr. James H. Bekker has clearly been clearly standing on a podium in front of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Silver Spring, MD. On July 23: there is no way to replace fluorine supplements if the government decides to remove them from the market.

In communities without fluorinated water, these supplements are the only way for families to help children access fluoride, said the dentist, protecting their teeth from decrease.

“When we do not have fluorine, there are certain things that are happening that are very disturbing,” said Bekker, a professor at the University of Utah School of Dentistry and former president of the American Dental Association, during a hearing debating the FDA plan to prohibit the ingestable fluoride tablets. “We have an increase in dental caries and we have an increase in the use of emergency services to receive care in dental emergencies.”

However, the FDA seems to be moving towards the ban on these supplements after a controversial hearing in which scientists, pediatricians and other doctors have argued for and against the prohibition of fluorine supplements. This decision comes after a controversial study published in Jama Pediatrics In January 2025, found that significant exposure to fluoride was linked to a decrease in children’s IQ scores. The level of fluoride linked to the disintegration of IQ was much higher than that of the number of people exposed through supplements or fluorinated water.

“What is said is that fluoride in water caused a cognitive decrease in young children – is therefore a difficult thing to defend,” said Dr. George Tidmarsh, the former pharmaceutical framework recently exploited to manage the FDA medication assessment and research center. He then criticized the pro-flourish presentations that had just occurred and praised the presentation of Dr. Bill Osmunson, a dentist on the board of directors of Fluoride Action Network, a group that defends against fluorine across the country.

In May, the FDA said that it would trigger measures to eliminate product prescription drug products for market children, and that it had asked the organization that Tidmarsh is now heading to assess the evidence of these prescription drug products. He set a date for October 31 for completing a security examination and a period of public comments, and to “take the appropriate measures concerning the abolition of these market products”. The July 23 audience was part of this period of public comments.

These fluorine supplements, unlike fluoridated water, have not been widely studied or tested, which is one of the reasons why the FDA says that it wants to prohibit them. “As far as children are concerned, we have to be mistaken on the security side,” said FDA commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary, in the announcement that the FDA would move to prohibit supplements.

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The move to restrict access to fluoride supplements follows efforts to prohibit fluorine from drinking water across the country; These efforts have succeeded in Utah and Florida, which both prohibited fluoride of drinking water this year. The challenges of fluoride in drinking water have become more widespread after Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now Secretary of Health and Social Services (HHS), called fluorine “industrial waste” in November 2024, and said that the Trump administration would advise that it will be removed from drinking water supplies.

The debate on fluoride is the last example of the way in which Kennedy’s mandate in HHS has turned upset decades of scientific consensus, putting many health professionals on the defensive. Fluoride has been widely proven to decrease the cavities and places that have prohibited fluoride of drinking water like Calgary, Canada, saw a notable increase in dental caries thereafter. (Calgary later decided to restore the fluoride of water supply.) Studies that suggest negative impacts of fluoride on children’s IQs and thyroid function, on the other hand, were mainly carried out outside the United States and examined higher fluoride beaches than most American children are exposed.

“We are the only country questioning fluoride safety at this level,” said Dr. Scott Tomar, dentist at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Dentistry, one of the many health professionals who spoke at the hearing and did not seem a little frustrated by some of the sciences presented.

Doctors and dentists have also said that the prohibition of fluoride supplements would disproportionately affect low -income children who do not have constant access to dental care and who often live in areas that already have high cavity rates. Even if these children have best practices to take care of their teeth, the absence of fluorine can hurt.

“Simple brushing and the use of toothpaste is not enough,” said Dr. Jennifer Webster-Cyriaque, a dentist who is the acting director of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research at the National Institutes of Health.

While the official FDA panels were uniformly divided between pro and anti-flood speakers, the public commentary period was full of doctors and dentists reiterating the advantages of fluoritation.

“It is important to note that no serious or robust data exists to support the assertion that these products constitute a threat to public health,” said Peter Pitts, president and co-founder of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, in the period of public comments.

Learn more:: Science behind fluoride in drinking water

The American Dental Association, the American Association of Pediatrics, other professional medical organizations, as well as many independent dentists and dental hygienists have submitted comments to the FDA on the theme of fluoritation, pleading so that the supplements remain on the market. One of the decision of the decision to prohibit fluoride supplements is that states prohibited by water supplies indicate supplements as a means for families to give fluorine to their children once it has been removed from water supply. Now the government talks about removing them.

“All this argument in this legislation was” obtaining an supplement, “said Bekker, the dentist of Utah.” While we consider the supplements, the possibility of having them available is a question of choice of people. We are not forum to take them; we allow them to have an option and to have the choice. ”

Tidmarsh, of the FDA, assured the pro-flourure contingent that if the supplements are prohibited, there is always a way to recover them on the market: as a medication. He stressed that the supplements are not approved by the FDA, which means that they have not undergone rigorous tests and analyzes. (Many pharmaceutical products prescribed to children, such as certain cold drugs, have not passed through this analysis either because there are not many clinical trials involving children.) “If we decide to bring back sodium fluoride, there is nothing that prevents a group from doing the rigorous studies that brought it back to the FDA,” he said.

The hearing included evidence of the effect of fluoride on the intestinal microbiome, on neurocognitive development and on the thyroid. But many of these presentations received a decline from doctors and dentists at the hearing, who said they had not presented a complete image of what research really found.